Justin Sullivan's Video Production

Justin Sullivan's Video Page

Sony DCR-VX1000 Digital Handycam As a kid some relative or other left their video camera lying around. Possibly even offered me a turn.. Ever since, I've had a bit of a passion for making videos.

From my mighty production house came such timeless classics as How Bloody Interesting and Censored Network News.

We had a family camera some years back, but it's been pretty sick for a while now so unfortuantely I haven't pursued this as much as I would have liked to. However I'm building this virtual shrine to video production as it remains one of my passions.

Not so long ago I hoped to have an ultra-high quality, ultra-light video camera that I can play back on a wall-sized flat TV listen in on surround hi-fi gear... Maybe one day, when I have some more money and a sensibly shaped room to fit all this in.

As it happens I'm now part of the way there, having been the proud owner of a Sony DCR TRV7E for a while now. The image quality is incredible, sound is pretty good (and would be just about perfect with the use of an external microphone but I haven't got around to that yet). The camera is reasonably sized and I prefer it to the PC7 for ease of use (the PC7 is just too small for my hands). Although almost twice the weight of the PC7 it's still not bad. On a five week trip around Italy and Switzerland earlier this year I took my TRV7E pretty much everywhere and only occasionally got a dead arm (like after spending six hours walking around Pompeii).

I have only two complaints with the TRV7E.

Low light performance is not too hot. Basically the gain will crank right up and give you a fairly dotty and ugly image with poor clairty in any very low light situation. Most of the time this hasn't been a problem but there have been occassions when I'd hoped to be able to capture something and it's been just too dark. Manual shutter speed control would be nice to help with this.
The LCD screen is *too* bright sometimes. For outdoor use even in bright sunlight I find the screen is very good, with only a few occassions when I've ever been really unsure of what was going on on the screen. Mostly this was when I was lost on a glacier in Switzerland and had snow-blindness coming on and couldn't see a whole lot of anything much :-) But there have been times when I've been in dark surroundings and wanted to take pictures of something (e.g. activity on a brightly lit stage) and have found it difficult because of the light the LCD gives off. Yes, I could just use the viewfinder but I'd rather not have to.

If I ever need better image quality (which seems highly unlikely), I like the look of the DCR-VX1000 digital video camera (shown above; the one that looks like a camcorder). Very sexy design - and well featured too. The price tag is somewhat less appealling but as with most technology stuff that will no doubt fall over time. In a few years time, we'll probably all have them, strapped to our heads and beaming back pictures to secret government agencies.. Errmm..

Sony DCR-PC7 Digital Camcorder Also fun is the DCR-PC7 which is a slightly more consumery model and is tiny. It's the camera used by the lucky so-and-so' in ABC's original series of Race Around The World in 1997. In series two of Race, they used Panasonic NV-DX100EN 3CCD cameras instead.